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Home , 1963 in British music, Chris Montez, Mersey Beat, Record Mirror, Terry Dene, The Love You Make

Popular Music and Society Vol. 33, No. 4, October 2010, pp. 549–562

“I Read the News Today, Oh Boy”: The British Press and Ian Inglis

The public arrival of the Beatles in 1963 brought unforeseen difficulties for journalists in the UK. Although there was an established weekly music press, centered around a quartet of titles, its writers had little practical experience of British performers whose popularity and success eclipsed that of their American contemporaries, and who actively sought to create a distinctive musical style of their own. However, the problem was even more acute for the country’s national daily and weekly press: the traditional policy of regarding popular music as either an amusing and peripheral diversion or an incitement to delinquency and depravity left it ill-equipped to structure its coverage of a group whose personalities, behavior, and achievements transcended previous categorizations and blurred the distinction between news and entertainment. The decisions taken by the British press played a crucial role in shaping the early popularity of the Beatles, and also helped to establish a journalistic approach through which popular music became a legitimate and lucrative topic for newspapers in the UK.

Throughout the , popular music in Britain had occupied a relatively small, and unimportant, corner of the entertainment industry. A handful of -based record labels (Pye, Philips, Decca, EMI) exercised strict controls over entry into the business. While duos were tolerated, musical groups were regarded as cumbersome, outdated obstacles to success, and the preferred template for musical performance was the lead singer and backing group. An “assembly-line” philosophy of songwriting refused any connection between composing and performing, and rendered the concept of the singer-songwriter virtually unknown. The country’s three radio channels (the Light Programme, the Home Service, and the Third Programme, all operated by the BBC) and two television networks (BBC and ITV) provided very few regular outlets for popular music. American records dominated the UK charts, and British performers routinely modeled themselves on the leading US stars, but there was no reciprocity of interest: only a tiny number of British singers and musicians (Lonnie Donegan, Acker Bilk, the Tornados) enjoyed any chart success in the US.

ISSN 0300-7766 (print)/ISSN 1740-1712 (online) q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/03007761003694373 550 I. Inglis The idea that the production and consumption of popular music might contain any intellectual or aesthetic value was seen as preposterous: Hoggart’s contemporary description of “jukebox boys,” trapped in “a myth-world compounded of a few simple elements which they take to be those of American life ... a depressing group [who] are rather less intelligent than the average [and] have no aim, no ambition, no protection, no belief” (248–49), exemplified perfectly the narrow and dismissive attitudes that had prevailed since the emergence of and the growth of its teenage audience. In the early 1960s, there seemed to be little reason to believe that this situation might change. Writing at the end of 1962, the British agent/promoter Bunny Lewis declared:

I accept the American domination because it is quite natural that we should be up against a steam-roller when it comes to competing with them. Popular music is an American tradition—and believe me, anyone who says it isn’t, is banging his head against a brick wall. America has a much bigger population than we have—therefore much more money. Money breeds power, and it’s power they have. (Lewis 69) This interpretation was reflected in the music press’s unspoken acknowledgement that, just as Hollywood had asserted its command of the international film industry for decades and US television had quickly established its presence across global TV schedules, so too American performers and perspectives would inevitably continue to define the parameters of popular music. As a result, the four leading titles reproduced a weekly product typically constructed around a format that merged a compliant reliance on transatlantic features, interviews, and reviews, with a well-meaning but unconvincing enthusiasm for domestic musical activity that “amounted to little more than news and gossip” (Gudmundsson et al. 41). New Musical Express (1952–), (1954–91, initially published as Record & Show Mirror and New Record Mirror), and Disc (1958–75, latterly published as Disc Weekly and Disc & Music Echo) were relatively recent publications that, since their inception, had been guided by current popularity and record sales; (1926–2000) retained some of its pre-war and immediate post-war focus on jazz but, by the early 1960s, was also shifting toward a more pop-oriented approach. Together, they created a critically bland, but commercially attractive, form of specialist journalism:

They provided no perspective, historical or otherwise, on the music they covered; they had no developed critical positions or standards (what was popular equalled, by and large, what was good); they showed no curiosity in where records came from or where they went. The music papers presented the industry’s own public view of itself and were written, accordingly, in a breathy, adman’s prose. (Frith 140) However, within a few months of Lewis’s statement, the Beatles had confronted and overturned all the perennial assumptions that had guided the popular music industry’s policies and practices over the previous decade. A four-piece group from the North of , that composed its own songs, played its own instruments, swapped Popular Music and Society 551 lead vocals, and celebrated—rather than concealed—its Liverpudlian origins seemed to defy all the established criteria for professional success. And yet, in the first half of 1963, the Beatles achieved two Number One singles (“” and “”), a chart-topping (Please Please Me) and undertook three sell-out nationwide tours. Unaccustomed to the innovative elements they brought to their music, unused to the scenes of increasing hysteria that accompanied the group’s appearances, and unprepared for the Beatles’ refusal to play the role of deferential or inarticulate pop stars, the music weeklies found themselves in the awkward position of having to describe and explain events for which there was no comparable precedent. Of course, journalists based in and around had been familiar long before their breakthrough in 1963. As early as August 1961, the fortnightly had described them as “musically authoritative and physically magnetic ... rhythmic revolutionaries. An act which from beginning to end is a series of climaxes. Truly a phenomenon. I don’t think anything like them will ever happen again” (Wooler 22). Perhaps conscious of the need to avoid unnecessarily alienating any potential readers, the city’s local newspapers had been similarly supportive. In October 1961, the Crosby Herald referred to “their own brand of feet-tapping rock” (“St John Brigade” 78); in January 1962, the South Liverpool Weekly News commented that “the boys are making quite a name for themselves locally . ... it might not be long before they receive nationwide acclaim” (“They’re Hoping” 89). In contrast, early press reaction to the Beatles outside Liverpool was largely negative. Unconstrained by any regional loyalty, the Peterborough Standard’s verdict on the group’s appearance in the town in December 1962, when they supported Frank Ifield, concluded that:

there has been a gradual decline in the standard of supporting artists. “The exciting Beatles” rock group quite frankly failed to excite me. The drummer apparently thought that his job was to lead, not to provide rhythm. He made far too much noise, and in their final number “Twist and Shout” it sounded as though everyone was trying to make more noise than the others . ... Frank Ifield is the only one I shall remember. (Whittaker 85) This pattern of local support and national indifference was also evident in press responses to the group’s first single “.” Whereas the review in Mersey Beat described it as “the type of number which grows on you . ... I enjoyed it more and more each time I played it” (Harry 43), and the Liverpool Echo called it “an infectious, medium-paced ballad with an exceptionally haunting harmonica accompaniment” (qtd in Barrow 27), Record Mirror briefly dismissed it as “an okay song [which] drags through the middle, particularly during the harmonica lead” (qtd in Sandercombe 11). When the Beatles’ second single “Please Please Me” was released in January 1963, the level of interest within the music press had grown as a result of the modest chart success of “Love Me Do.” New Musical Express commented that “this vocal and instrumental quartet has turned out a really enjoyable platter, full of beat, vigour and vitality—and what’s more, it’s different. I can’t think of any other group currently 552 I. Inglis recording in this style” (A. Evans). When the record went on to become the group’s first Number One single in the UK, the Beatles were immediately hailed in the music weeklies as an exciting new talent: Record Mirror said they were “hotter than anyone else on the British music scene” (qtd in Sandercombe 14); New Musical Express predicted that “things are beginning to move for the Beatles” (Smith “You’ve Pleased”); Melody Maker announced “it’s happening big for the Beatles” (“The Beat Boys” 1). Unsurprisingly, their chart achievements were insufficient to stimulate the attention of the national press. For the daily and Sunday newspapers, concentrated in and around Fleet Street in London, popular music was perceived as an appropriate source of news only when its narrative displayed some combination of the components of “newsworthiness” originally identified by Galtung and Ruge: frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, elite status, personalization, negativity (64–91). Occasions on which some or all of these news values had coalesced had included the disturbances that accompanied Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” during screenings of Blackboard Jungle; ’s induction into, and discharge from, the US army; the deaths of Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran; Jerry Lee Lewis’s expulsion from the UK after the revelation that his new bride was his 13-year-old cousin; and the court conviction, conscription battle, and nervous breakdown of UK pop star Terry Dene. All these incidents were, in different ways, sensational, dramatic and controversial, and fitted journalists’ working definitions of “news.” The story of the Beatles would become attractive to the national press (as opposed to the music press) only when it too began to display some of the same characteristics. The one exception to this general reluctance was a piece that was published in London’s Evening Standard on 2 February 1963. Written by Maureen Cleave and (somewhat prematurely) entitled “Why the Beatles Create All that Frenzy,” its significance was threefold: it was the first major article about the group to appear in a newspaper outside Liverpool; it introduced the Beatles to London audiences; and it adopted a persuasive tone that recognized their uniqueness, emphasized their individual qualities, and which would become the model for much subsequent journalism:

The Beatles are the darlings of Merseyside . ... On stage, there’s none of this humble bowing of the head, or self-effacing trips over the microphone leads. They know exactly what they can get away with . ... They stand there, bursting with self- confidence and professional polish. has an upper lip which is brutal in a devastating way. is handsome, whimsical and untidy. Paul McCartney has a round baby face, while Ringo Starr is ugly but cute . ... They are very friendly and charming. They like each other and everybody else, and are seen around a good deal. They also write their own songs. They are considered intelligent. (Cleave 57–58) Although Cleave is better known for her notorious interview with Lennon in 1966, in which he claimed that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus” (“How Does Popular Music and Society 553 a Beatle” 72) the repercussions of her earlier piece were no less important in determining the shape of the group’s professional trajectory. At a time when the Beatles were yet to make their first nationwide tour and had just released their second single, it provided a bridge between the relative obscurity of their local reputation in Liverpool and the glamorous promise of a career in . Her insistence that “it’s their looks that really get people going” (“Why the Beatles” 57) and her references to their distinctive clothes and hairstyles was one of the earliest public confirmations that the group’s visual style was as significant as its musical appeal. And her refusal to condemn the frenzy created by the Beatles was a complete inversion of the news media’s previous hostility to rock and roll in the mid-1950s, famously illustrated in an editorial comment in the Daily Mail: “It is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows ragtime, blues, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro’s revenge” (qtd in Cloonan 114–15). Her brief article, hidden away on the inside pages of the Evening Standard’s Saturday edition, thus effectively provided journalists with a concise, preliminary framework, to be employed if and when the group were to make the transition from nascent pop stars to items of front-page news. In fact, the first signs of that transformation became evident during the Beatles’ live appearances in February–March 1963 as one of the support acts on the nationwide tour headed by Helen Shapiro. Originally booked to open the show, the group was soon asked to close the first half of the program, as audience reaction to their stage performance forced the promoters to adjust the running order:

By the second half of the Helen Shapiro tour, everywhere the Beatles played, ear- splitting screams broke out at the mere mention of their names. The minute the lights went down, the crowd went crazy. And after each act finished its set, the theaters shook with kids hollering, “We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!” It wreaked havoc with the tour [and] it often took several minutes to restore order between sets. (Spitz 383) When scenes of “bedlam” (Gould 151) and “riots” (Davies 189) were repeated on the group’s tours with and Chris Montez in March, and Roy Orbison in May, the national press saw them as an unexpected, but welcome, alternative to the John Profumo-Christine Keeler sex-and-politics scandal that had monopolized the news media since the start of the year. Faced with a choice between criticizing the events as one more example of the irresponsible and anti-social behavior provoked by rock and roll or celebrating them as an example of youthful exuberance, the press took its lead from the form and content of Cleave’s article, and chose the latter option. It was a decision that would have enormous significance; with only a few exceptions, the image of the group that was generated and circulated across Britain in 1963 (and, from 1964, across the rest of the world) was wholly positive in its combination of adult fascination and adolescent expectancy:

Image refers to the vehicle by which audiences know the Beatles. A complex media construct ... the Beatles’ image initially was framed along traditional notions of 554 I. Inglis entertainment [and] was promoted along a predictable path, one serving the requirements of the market. (Frontani 3) The maintenance of that commercially driven image was aided by the structure and ambitions of the British press, which were vastly different in the early 1960s from those which would evolve in subsequent decades. Readership profiles were largely based around social class, and there was little of the internecine competition and overt hostility that would characterize Fleet Street’s circulation wars from the 1970s onward. As a result, the working relationships between the press and many of the institutions about which it reported (including sport and entertainment) were generally comfortable and mutually beneficial. From the start of the Beatles’ career, to prove advantageous for the group and its newly appointed press officer, Tony Barrow:

It was much easier to keep unwanted stories out of the press than it would be today. In those days editors agreed that their younger readers wanted good news stories about their favourite pop stars so there was scarcely any of the nasty dirt-digging that goes on today. Fleet Street co-operated by simply not running the type of personal stuff that we wanted to play down. At ’s firm insistence we were not admitting that John was married. ... Even when people in Liverpool saw Cynthia wheeling her pram round local shops quite openly, we had no comment for the papers and they made no great effort to uncover the facts. (Barrow 38) The gratitude of the British press for the news stories and photo opportunities supplied almost daily by the Beatles’ appearances was amplified in November 1963 after the group performed to members of the royal family in the annual Royal Variety Show at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre. In the wake of the Queen Mother’s comment that “they are so fresh and vital ... I simply adore them” (M. Evans 76), journalistic enthusiasm turned to euphoria, particularly in the pages of the popular press. The Daily Mirror declared, “You have to be a real sour square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles. ... it’s plain to see why these four energetic, cheeky lads from Liverpool go down so big. They’re young, new. They’re high-spirited, cheerful” (“Yeah Yeah Yeah”); the Daily Mail, confident of its readership’s knowledge of the group, stopped using the word “Beatles” in its headlines and substituted a logo of four Beatle haircuts (Davies 202); the Evening Standard, in an end-of-year supplement entitled “Year of the Beatles,” announced that “an examination of the heart of the nation at this moment would reveal the word BEATLE engraved upon it” (qtd in Braun 64–65). The quality press were similarly congratulatory. The Times applauded Lennon and McCartney as “the outstanding English composers of 1963” and concluded that the Beatles “have brought a distinctive and exhilarating flavour into a genre of music that was in danger of ceasing to be music at all” (Mann); The Guardian described them as “the most popular vocal-instrumental group in Britain” (Reynolds 69); in The Sunday Times, Richard Buckle claimed Lennon and McCartney were “the greatest composers since Beethoven” (qtd in Davies 204). Popular Music and Society 555 At the same time, the previous indifference of the regional press gave way to an equally affectionate endorsement of their qualities. York’s Evening Press noted the “thunderous applause” at the group’s concert in the town, adding, “The Beatles were a riot! They could have sung a Liverpool bus time-table and scored a hit” (Brewer 150); the Abergavenny Chronicle spoke approvingly of the Beatles’ generosity in agreeing to take part in a charity autograph session (for the Freedom from Hunger campaign) and of the civic reception that awaited “one of the town’s greatest-ever attractions” (“Guitar Player” 113); the Guernsey Evening Press praised “Liverpool’s fabulous Beatles ... this northern beat group which has almost completely revolutionised the pop scene ... could do no wrong for the screaming, shouting Candie audience” (“Big Welcome” 153). Given such levels of acclaim, it was perhaps inevitable that the few newspaper articles to depart from the emerging consensus were themselves criticized for varying degrees of ignorance or condescension. In November 1963, an editorial in the right- wing Daily Telegraph warned that:

This hysteria presumably fills heads and hearts otherwise empty. Is there not something a bit frightening in whole masses of young people, all apparently so suggestible, so volatile and rudderless? What material here for a maniac’s shaping. Hitler would have disapproved, but he could have seen what in other circumstances might be made of it. (qtd in Gould 166) It was followed shortly afterward by a remarkably similar piece in the columns of the left-wing weekly New Statesman, under the headline “The Menace of Beatlism”:

Those who flock around the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures: their existence, in such large numbers ... is a fearful indictment of our education system which in ten years of schooling can scarcely raise them to literacy. (P. Johnson 327) Such stories disparaged the Beatles’ fans; very few were directly critical of the Beatles themselves. A two-page feature by the Daily Mirror’s Donald Zec which depicted them as “four frenzied little Lord Fauntleroys who are earning five thousand pounds a week” and referred to their “stone-age haircuts” (6–7) was, despite its patronizing tone, welcomed by the group as its first major interview to appear in a national daily newspaper, and did little to disrupt the common line upon which the British press had, by the end of 1963, clearly agreed:

Fleet Street had settled on its view of the Beatles—the four happy-go-lucky Liverpool lads who looked absurd, but knew it, and whose salty one-line witticisms seemed to epitomise the honesty of the working classes, blowing through the seedy lies of the Profumo upper crust. “You had to write it that way,” an ex-Daily Mirror man says. “You knew that if you didn’t, the Sketch would and the Express would and the Mail and the Standard would. You were writing in self-defence.” (Norman 185) With the themes and perspectives of a generic news agenda thus established, the gatekeeping role of journalists assumed increasing importance, as decisions about the 556 I. Inglis systematic inclusion and exclusion of certain categories of stories became embedded in the routine coverage of the Beatles. Included were such items as the group’s meeting with the Coles quadruplets (Edna, Frances, Marie, Patricia) from London on the girls’ 13th birthday in September 1963, and accounts of the Beatles disguising themselves as policemen before and after their show at ’s Hippodrome Theatre in November 1963; excluded were accounts of an alleged assault on an elderly photographer in the summer of 1963 (Norman 185), and references to the group’s visits to the brothels of Amsterdam in June 1964, as recalled by John Lennon (Wenner 86). For a national press in which “there was almost no favourable discussion of rock ‘n’ roll or Beat” (Bradley 90) and whose relationship with popular music “has always been uneasy” (Cloonan 114) this represented a remarkable realignment. Of course, much of the impetus for that realignment was driven by anticipated (and real) boosts in circulation. The only domestic news item that threatened to disrupt temporarily the saturation news coverage given to the group in the second half of 1963 (during which the Beatles claimed two more Number One singles, “” and “,” and a second chart-topping album, With the Beatles) was the Great Train Robbery in August; at one point, five national newspapers were simultaneously serializing their own versions of the Beatles’ life story (Davies 202). For many journalists, including Daily Mirror show business correspondent Don Short, the Beatles were no longer a diversion, but a priority:

It was exactly the story we’d been waiting for. Up until that time, I’d merely go around to Claridge’s or the Savoy, and interview Sammy Davis Jr one week, Andy Williams the next, but the Beatles had all this drama swirling around them—and they were sexy, a very sexy story. (qtd in Spitz 428) The impact on the music press, while significant, was less dramatic. By and large, the four weekly titles positioned their reports of the group within existing frameworks, and simply decreased the amount of space that had until recently been devoted to American performers, and increased the amount of space devoted to the Beatles:

Suddenly the paper [Melody Maker], which championed the group with unreserved enthusiasm, was awash with what would soon be called : every issue featured a Beatles report and many had a Beatles story on the front cover. Before long the paper was overrun with the group, almost to the exclusion of anything else ... live reviews, gossip, a news story, the group reviewing new singles, an interview, tales of Beatlemania. (Johnstone 119–22) In New Musical Express too, many of the stories followed the same light-hearted, jaunty approach: headlines such as “George Hopes Plane Exits Stay Shut!” (Hutchins), “Beatles Keep Royal Suits Secret” (D. Johnson), and “Beatles Had Fish for Xmas Dinner!” (Smith 3) continued to endorse the paper’s view that popular music derived from, and should be treated as, light entertainment. In contrast, the national press’s history of largely ignoring popular music meant that it was less restricted by pre-existing definitions and genres of journalism. Indeed, Popular Music and Society 557 much innovative and informative coverage of the Beatles came not, as might have been expected, from journalists on the weekly music press, but from writers on daily (or Sunday) newspapers, who had little experience of reporting the activities of “pop stars,” and who were free to range across a number of themes in the way they reported the Beatles; many of these were derived from their newspaper’s existing editorial style. As a result, several facets of an emerging journalistic strategy quickly became visible. One was apparent in the contrasting ways in which the songs of the Beatles were assessed and reviewed. New Musical Express’s review of “Not a Second Time” ran to just six words: “on which George Martin plays piano” (Smith “Beatles Tell”); Record Mirror displayed equal brevity: “John singing a dual-tracked lead” (qtd in Sandercombe 27). The Times, however, gave it a much more detailed consideration:

One gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat submediant key switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of “Not a Second Time”, the chord progression which ends Mahler’s Song of the Earth. (Mann) It has been suggested that the work of critics (theatre, movie, literary, music) should contain three phases, each of which fulfils a separate function: descriptive, interpretative, evaluative (Martin and Jacobus 50–59). In his analysis of the art of reviewing, Allen provides more information about each of these requirements:

In the descriptive phase, the reviewer’s job is to focus on the form of the review’s subject, placing it in the context of the current cultural zeitgeist. ... In the interpretive phase, the reviewer uses her or his knowledge of the differing forms of culture to explain the content to the reader. ... In the evaluative phase, at its simplest, the reviewer makes a recommendation about the work, or at least enables readers to make a judgement. (Allen 181) In the early 1960s, even after the emergence of the Beatles had revealed the existence of a hitherto overlooked music scene across much of Britain (and encouraged the rapid growth of an internally driven popular music industry) reviews in the music weeklies remained essentially descriptive. Perhaps journalists believed that their readers would not welcome, or did not require, a change of emphasis; perhaps they lacked the technical ability to decipher and write about music in anything more than a superficial manner; perhaps they feared accusations of pretentiousness. Whatever the combination of factors may have been, by the end of 1963 the continuing focus on “personality, sex appeal and sales potential” (Johnstone 122) which characterized the music press was gradually, but visibly, counter-balanced by the explicit attempts of some writers in the quality press to introduce interpretative and evaluative elements to their own popular music reviews; the already-quoted William Mann of the Times has been rightly identified as “the first to treat the group as a musical entity rather than just another teenage fad” (Thomson and Gutman xvii). His review of “This Boy” exemplified a brand of analytical commentary not seen before in the British press: “the slow, sad song ... is expressively unusual for its lugubrious music, but 558 I. Inglis harmonically it is one of their most intriguing, with its chains of pandiatonic clusters, and the sentiment is acceptable because voiced cleanly and crisply” (Mann). The claim that “it was greeted with hoots of mirth” (Mellers 15) is somewhat exaggerated; while there was certainly considerable surprise that the Times—the conservative voice of the British establishment—should write about popular music in this way, it sprang less from a fear that cultural barriers between elite and popular culture had been infringed, and more from a realization that popular music could lend itself to this sort of attention. A second example of the way in which the national press brought fresh perspectives to its coverage of popular music—and which distanced it from the weekly music press—was seen in its numerous attempts to offer some sort of quasi-psychological explanation for the phenomenon of Beatlemania itself.1 While the personal appearances of British pop stars like and had rarely produced anything more dramatic than good-natured cheering and clapping, audience reactions to the Beatles—and the increasing police presence required to maintain control—had quickly exceeded all experiences and expectations. The Daily Mirror suggested that the Beatles were “relieving a sexual urge” (quoted in Davies 200); the Sunday Times, in its investigation of “The Anatomy of Beatlemania,” believed “sexual emancipation is a factor in the phenomenon, though at a superficial level this may not be so important ... it is the bubbly, uninhibited gaiety of the group that generates enthusiasm” (qtd in Braun 12); , in an article entitled “The Roots of Beatlemania,” searched for historical and anthropological comparisons, focusing on “the potency of the guitar as a sex symbol” (qtd in Davies 201); the News of the World saw it as a rite de passage for teenage girls in their transition from adolescence to adulthood, explaining that “this is one way of flinging off childhood restraints and letting themselves go. ... the girls are subconsciously preparing for motherhood. The frenzied screams are a rehearsal for that moment. Even the jelly babies are symbolic” (qtd in Norman 193). Third, the national newspaper industry was, like the popular music industry itself, located in London. For both institutions, the inescapable fact of the Beatles’ Liverpool background brought with it an awkward and potentially embarrassing dilemma: how to acknowledge and celebrate their accomplishments without surrendering some of the capital’s claim to cultural and artistic monopoly. When, in the wake of the group’s achievements, other performers from Liverpool (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, the Searchers, the Fourmost, the Swinging Blue Jeans, ) began to repeat their success, the problem was exacerbated, and a plausible explanation had to be constructed. The solution lay in the alleged “discovery” of a hitherto unknown sound—“the Mersey sound”—a blanket label that served to identify music from Liverpool not as a radical alternative to, but as a regional variation of, popular music in Britain that could be contained within existing industrial and commercial frameworks. Overlooking the considerable variety of musical styles favored by the city’s performers (Bangs 202–03; Bradley 75; O’Grady 175–76) and ignoring the Beatles’ Popular Music and Society 559 own denial of similarities with other performers (Beatles 101; Giuliano and Giuliano 6; Johnson “No Liverpool Sound” 3), the national press eagerly constructed a simplistic sociological story that sought to contextualize the songs of the Beatles by translating Liverpool’s music into a coherent whole, and definitively linking it to socio-historical conditions in the city. The Observer defined the Mersey sound as “the true and unique voice of Liverpool’s working class” (qtd in Leslie 148); the Guardian believed that it reflected a “working class sentimentality” (Reynolds 69); the communist Daily Worker asserted that “the Mersey sound is the voice of 80,000 crumbling houses and 30,000 people on the dole” (qtd in Davies 201). By thus subsuming the music of the Beatles into a broader geopolitical category (although the group clearly remained its principal representatives) the press also supplied a succinct advertising slogan and marketing brand that could be readily employed and easily recognized. For example, in January 1964, when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was replaced at Number One in the UK singles charts by the Dave Clark Five’s “Glad All Over,” national newspapers took immediate advantage of the opportunity to predict the demise of the Mersey sound and to champion the sound of the London group. The headlined its front-page story: “Tottenham Sound Has Crushed the Beatles” (qtd in Davies 209). The appeal (to the news media and its readers) of the idea of the Mersey sound was assisted in the early 1960s by the increasing acceptance of “the North” as a site of legitimate creative activity. The popularity of television dramas such as Z Cars (set in Liverpool) and Coronation Street (set in ), and the success of artists David Hockney (from Bradford) and L. S. Lowry (from Manchester), novelists David Storey (from Wakefield), Stan Barstow (from Ossett), and John Braine (from Bradford), playwrights Alan Bennett and Keith Waterhouse (both from Leeds) and Shelagh Delaney (from Salford), actors (from Salford), Tom Courtenay (from Hull), and Rita Tushingham (from Liverpool) were pivotal in redefining the cultural image of the North. It was thus both attractive and convenient to locate the Beatles and their Liverpool peers within the same milieu. Fourth, the news media began to realize that the popularity of the Beatles was so great that it could supplement its news coverage of the group with news coverage of the individual members. The Daily Mail positioned news of McCartney’s bout of influenza in November 1963 on its front page, under the headline “Girls Weep for the Beatle Who Has Flu”; in January 1964, the Daily Express contracted Harrison to lend his name to a series of ghosted weekly columns, written by Liverpool journalist Derek Taylor (Brown and Gaines 123); the publication of Lennon’s in March 1964 prompted the Times Literary Supplement to comment that “it is worth the attention of anyone who fears for the impoverishment of the English language and the British imagination” (qtd in Davies 219); Starr’s eight-day confinement in London’s University College Hospital for the removal of his tonsils in June 1964 necessitated the installation of additional telephone lines and daily press releases to satisfy the incessant media interest (Baker 22; Taylor 110). By following its initial news coverage of the Beatles’ unexpected popularity with analyses of their music, explanations of the causes and consequences of Beatlemania, 560 I. Inglis estimations of the importance of their Liverpudlian origins, and increasingly detailed accounts of their personal lives, the British press ensured that, by the end of 1963, the Beatles—collectively and individually—were the most comprehensively documented people in Britain. For the first time in British newspaper history, popular musicians consistently received greater levels of media attention than did members of the royal family, politicians, or the country’s leading sportsmen and sportswomen: “they were on everyone’s lips, in every paper, jokes were created about them, cartoons were full of them ... every paper, every day, had something on them” (Davies 202). But just as the British press was obliged to fashion its coverage of the Beatles without the benefit of previous models, so too the group itself was unsure of the most appropriate way in which to direct its relationship with the media. Although Epstein had overseen a significant expansion of the NEMS press office in 1963 to accommodate the spiraling interest in the Beatles, he was aware that the enormous volume of coverage was not without risk:

A journalist told me in October, “By Christmas, it will be impossible to look at the front page of any newspaper in England without seeing a reference to them,” and he was right. At first the sight of the Beatles in newspapers, the discussion of their views, their habits, their clothes, was exciting. ... it was good for them and it was good for business. But finally it became a great anxiety. How much longer, I wondered, could they maintain public interest. (76) In fact, public interest was not only maintained but substantially expanded throughout 1964, as the Beatles’ British success was repeated in America and around the world. With each new global milestone in audience hysteria, record sales, chart placings, concert attendances, and gate receipts, the British press—for whom the sight of British popular musicians overturning the traditional dominance of US entertainers stimulated a triumphant nationalism—renewed its fascinated and unconditional support for a story that promised to run indefinitely, as Lennon later, and somewhat cynically, acknowledged:

Because everybody wants the image to carry on. The press around with you want to carry on, because they want the free drinks and the free whores and the fun. Everybody wants to keep on the bandwagon. ... We were the Caesars. Who was going to knock us when there’s a million pounds to be made? Everybody wanted in. (Wenner 87) Nevertheless, in 1963, at a time when coverage of popular music in Britain was desultory and intermittent, the way in which the Beatles were presented to the country’s national newspaper readership was significant at three levels. For the Beatles, it provided an invaluable vehicle through which they, and their music, were introduced to non-traditional and heterogeneous audiences in a wholly positive manner. For the national press itself, it confirmed that popular music, and the issues it raised, could be (and would remain) a legitimate source of serious news and comment. For the weekly music press, it provided a new and exemplary range of journalistic options to be co-opted on to their own agenda and which, in time, would lead to the emergence of a Popular Music and Society 561 new school of rock journalism. Although the relationship between the British press and the Beatles would alter radically in later years, there is no doubt that at the start of their career it occupied a hugely influential place in their developing story.

Note [1] There is disagreement over the origin of the term “Beatlemania.” Some sources assert it was introduced in October 1963 by the Daily Mail, others that it first appeared in the Daily Mirror in November 1963. For these and other claims, see Egan (38–39).

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